Many residences as well as commercial dwellings utilize dry wall panels; that is, pre-formed 4 ft..times.8 ft. sheets of gypsum board or the like. Normally, first and second such wall panels are secured on opposite sides of the normal 2.times.4 vertical studs to form the wall.
Often one of the wall panels will be damaged such as by a door knob on a swinging door in a corner portion of a room when the door is repeatedly opened and the normal door stop has not functioned properly. The damage takes the form of an actual hole punctured through the wall panel.
It is very difficult to repair such a hole by plaster since there is no support for the plaster and if the hole is relatively large, the patching can become quite awkward. A screen mesh can be secured over the opening to support the plaster, but then the finished front surface is no coplanar with the rest of the wall. Such a mesh could be applied to the rear of the hole by bending the mesh and then unbending the same and attempting to secure it with tacks or the like to the rear marginal edge. Again, however, such a mesh is not very strong and any plaster applied thereto could easily be punched out.
Because of the foregoing problems, either the entire panel has to be replaced or some type of rigid backing must be provided over the inside of the hole so that the final finishing plaster can be properly supported. With the latter thought in mind, a number of different types of plug arrangements have been proposed in the prior art to provide some type of backing to a hole to permit the same to be repaired. While such plugs can be effective, the ones available in the prior art are fairly complicated in construction and are time-consuming to install. For example, many of them incorporate screw means for urging first and second body members apart after they have been positioned through the opening in a collapsed position. A first one of the body members by threading the screw will then be backed against the rear marginal portions of the opening and the second body member will seat against a backing or the inside of the second wall panel to stabilize the structure.
Other proposed solutions simply employ a biasing spring between two members to urge them apart after they have been inserted in a collapsed position between the dry wall panels. These latter devices, while simple to install, do not really provide a rigid backing since any pressure applied to the exposed front portion of the first body at the hole will simply compress the spring and possibly dislodge the entire plug.